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This weekend, my sister makes all our dreams come true

Simon WhiteThe West Australian

Friday, 2 February 2018 4:30AM

The West Australian

VideoThere's been some brutal rough stuff, big crowds and a 37-year-old is about to make her AFLW debut.

Every winter day as a kid, I’d get home from school, grab my footy and run to the park across the road for a kick. I’d be out there until it was dark...and very often beyond that.

It was more than 30 years ago. In a different and innocent time, when a loving mum was more inclined to let her son disappear out of immediate sight for hours on his own.

Except I was very rarely on my own. Because as soon as she was old enough to be allowed, my younger sister Jodie would follow me.

We did it for years. To me she was just another kid that enjoyed footy. We’d practice taking hangers (Cappers, we called them then) and dishing out hip-and-shoulders.

There were times that I was probably way rougher than I needed to be. But I guess ultimately I couldn’t have been too bad. She kept following me, after all.

My footy career ended when I was 15. I wouldn’t really grow until after high school - for a worrying time it looked like little sis might shoot straight by me - and I got sick of trying to tackle blokes who were 15 or 20kg heavier. I figured running cross country was a safer bet.

Somehow, against all the odds of those different times, my sister kept playing. She’s still going now. On Sunday, at the age of 37. Jodie will make her AFLW debut for the Fremantle Dockers.

Camera IconMy footy career was short-lived but my sister’s has lasted.

It’s been some kind of journey. When she started playing organised football - for a University team in the late 1990s - the women’s game was unrecognisable compared to the slick and skilful affair that it is now.

For each team, you could sometimes count on a single hand the players who would kick a ball as it was designed to be kicked. I mean no disrespect in saying this - there still were some very, very talented players - but even with family involved, it could be hard to watch.

And small wonder really. The women’s game of that time was sadly starved of funds, development emphasis or any kind of public spotlight.

The competition kicks off Friday night and many believe Melbourne are team to beat.

The West Australian

VideoThe competition kicks off Friday night and many believe Melbourne are team to beat.

That’s all changed and a lot has changed for Jodie over the past 20 years too.

Back when she started playing for University, she was a human movement student. She’d eventually change tack totally and graduate university as a metallurgist.

She’d find a loving partner and five years ago they would become the mums of twin boys.

On the field, Jodie - or Wode, as we’ve called her for as long as I can remember - would earn an All-Australian jumper and win a bundle of local premierships. She’d also, as an amateur athlete, rehab her way back from a knee reconstruction and, having moved to Port Hedland, effectively spend her 35th and 36th years out of footy.

After coming back to Perth, she’d start again and, to the surprise of all of us, play better than she ever did. In August, a month before her 37th birthday, she won her first best-and-fairest award in the WA Women’s Football League.

Camera IconA game of frontyard golf at our childhood home - the park in the background is where we kicked the footy each day.Picture: Supplied

The day Jodie got drafted was the most nervous of my life. She’d trained with the Dockers in the lead-up but had no idea if she’d be taken or not. I figured her age would mean that she’d go late in the draft, if she went at all. I couldn’t bear the thought that she’d get so close to such an amazing opportunity and miss out.

A mate texted to say she’d been taken. I checked the live blog I’d been trying to follow at work and sure enough she’d gone at No. 18, the third of Freo’s seven picks. I can’t tell you how excited I was. I also can’t tell you how relieved I was.

There are many questions still to be answered about the AFLW. Will it be this popular in five years? Will clubs continue to embrace it? Will we get to a point where all the players in it can be full-time professional athletes.

But here’s one thing I can say for certain. The AFLW makes dreams come true.

For my mum, who has audibly winced through every hit her daughter took (every time she fell to the ground, to be honest) but never misses a game.

For my dad, who isn’t always an overly out-there guy in the emotional sense, but I know is so very chuffed by everything that his little girl has achieved.

For my sister’s partner Dee, who if the competition had come along six or seven years earlier, would have been running out there herself on Sunday.

For their boys Josh and Lucas (or Lucas and Josh - they’d hate me putting the other first!), who are too young to fully comprehend what Mumma is doing but luckily old enough to remember it happening.

For me too. As a kid I dreamed every night of pulling a Claremont jumper and playing for the Tigers. My sister getting a game for the Dockers will more than do.

Most of all, the AFLW has made a dream come true for Jodie.

She’s always been a quiet person. As a youngster, so little was heard from her that one of her grandmothers nicknamed her “Rowdy” (I realise now that having a brother who never shut up wouldn’t have helped her with getting a word in).

We’ve never really talked about why she’s stuck at it.

Why she’d spend summers busting her gut to be fit for a local competition where a good crowd is measured in the hundreds rather than thousands. Why she would battle back from a knee reconstruction and then continually decide to go around again into her mid-30s and beyond.

And why she would do what she does now (and what many of her teammates must be doing some form of); get up at 5am, get two excitable boys ready for kindy or day care, work a full day in Malaga, drive to Cockburn through peak-ish hour traffic to train in the summer heat and then finally drive back home again to the northern suburbs at 10pm. Try rinsing and repeating that a few times!

I guess she just truly loves the game.

Just by making it onto the field on Sunday, she’ll prove that sometimes the game can love you back a bit as well.

I was beyond proud when Jodie was drafted. I’ll be prouder still when I present her with her Fremantle jumper tonight. And Sunday...well, you fill in the blanks.